Bastion, Mini Ninjas playable in Chrome with native client

Google intends to kickstart a new wave of browser gaming with its Native Client technology, Venturebeat reports.

At least "a dozen" game companies attended an event at the company's GooglePlex headquarters in California to show their support for the tech, which will allow simple, secure, high-performance porting of PC and console games.

Among the attendees was Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada, who showed IO Interactive's Mini Ninja's running in the Chrome browser.

"Let us begin this new era together," he said. "Google's native client will be welcomed worldwide as a truly innovative technology for the information technology industry and game industry as well."

Wada explained that the addressable market for browser games is far bigger than that of consoles, but until now browser technology has not been able to support console-quality experiences.

"Google's native client solves this problem," he continued. "It is an excellent solution for browser gaming."

Supergiant Games was also at the event, and its celebrated debut release, Bastion, is another example of a console game that can now be played in Chrome.

Google believes that porting existing games to Native Client will be simple, and it is busy gathering support from popular tool-making companies like Unity Technologies.

The Unity engine will now include a Chrome export function, giving its registered users easy access to the 200 million people who have downloaded Google's browser.